Anne Hathaway rebukes Matt Lauer for ‘creepshot’ question

Actress Anne Hathaway politely hammered Today Show host Matt Lauer on Wednesday when he opened a standard promotional interview in a condescending tone over her recent brush with the paparazzi, Entertainment Weekly reported.

“Nice to see you. Seen a lot of you lately,” Lauer said at the outset of the interview, alluding to an incident Monday night where photographs surfaced of Hathaway exiting a car without wearing underwear.

“Let’s just get it out of the way,” he said. “Wardrobe malfunction the other night. What’s the lesson learned from something like that, other than you keep smiling, like you always do?”

After taking a breath and calling it unfortunate, Hathaway turned the issue around on Lauer.

“It kind of made me sad on two accounts,” she explained. “One was that I was very sad that we live in an age when someone takes a picture of another person in a vulnerable moment and rather than delete it, and do the decent thing, sells it. And I’m sorry that we live in a culture that commodifies sexuality of unwilling participants, which takes us back to Les Mis, because that’s what my character is.”

In the film, a movie adaptation of the musical Les Miserables, Hathaway plays Fantine, a young mother forced into a life of prostitution.

At that point, Lauer decided to drop the matter.

“That’s one of the most creative turns of a question I’ve ever heard, and I’m gonna take it at that,” he conceded, before steering the conversation back toward standard movie talk. “That’s fine.”

Hathaway’s “malfunction” falls under the definition of “creepshots,” where women are photographed without their knowledge, only to discover the pictures are plastered online. Earlier this year, the practice was at the center of the controversysurrounding the online forum Reddit, which housed a message board devoted to it, revealed to be helmed by 49-year-old programmer Michael Brutsch, a.k.a. “Violentacrez.”

About the Author

Arturo R. García is the managing editor at Racialicious.com. He is based in San Diego, California and has written for both print and broadcast media, including contributions to GlobalComment.com, The Root and Comment Is Free. Follow him on Twitter at @ABoyNamedArt